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Chicken Bouillon
For every two cups of bouillon wanted use one chicken bouillon cube and half a teaspoonful of prepared vegetable paste dissolved in two cups of boiling water and flavor with celery salt.
A three-ingredient cup of broth built from pantry concentrates, scaled per two cups. The only judgment involved is salt.
- Vegetable paste"Prepared vegetable paste" most likely meant a commercially prepared concentrated vegetable extract of the kind sold alongside meat extracts. The nearest current equivalents are a vegetable bouillon concentrate or a spoonful of tomato-free vegetable base; use half a teaspoon per two cups as written.
- Salt stacks upA bouillon cube, a vegetable concentrate and celery salt are all salt-forward. Dissolve the cube and paste first, taste, then add celery salt a pinch at a time.
- Cube ratioMost cubes today are formulated for one cube per cup, not per two cups. Read the wrapper: following the recipe with a modern cube may give you a thin broth, which is the intent here, or an underseasoned one, which is not.
- DissolvingPour the boiling water over the cube and paste and stir until no grit remains on the bottom of the cup. Undissolved paste settles and the last mouthful turns sharp.
- ServingTwo cups serves two as a first course in cups rather than soup plates. Serve hot, and strain if the paste leaves flecks.
- If you want it richerThe recipe assumes the bouillon is a light opener, not a meal. A slice of lemon or a dash of sherry in the cup is a common addition to clear soups and does no harm to the balance.
This is a recipe about convenience rather than cookery. Jarred meat and vegetable extracts had been on grocery shelves since the later nineteenth century, and compressed bouillon cubes followed in the early twentieth, so a hostess could build a first course from a kettle and a cupboard instead of a stockpot simmering all afternoon. Informal entertaining collections aimed at cooks without servants leaned on such shortcuts, and a clear soup course was still expected at a formal meal: the form of the menu outlasted the labor behind it. Celery salt, cheap and widely sold in tins, was one way of giving a concentrate the suggestion of fresh vegetables.